


two in the folk that keep the Dead down

by rain_sleet_snow



Series: does the walker choose the path [6]
Category: Old Kingdom - Garth Nix, Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: (canon-typical - Rey's upbringing), Adoption, Canon-Typical Mogget, Canon-Typical Violence, Charter Magic, Child Neglect, Established Relationship, F/M, Families of Choice, Family, Gen, Inheritance, Magic, The Clayr's Glacier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-29
Updated: 2019-09-29
Packaged: 2020-11-07 12:49:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20817548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: No Charter mark and she threw stones at a Mordicant, instead of running away. Who is this girl?"Jyn, this is Rey," Cassian says, answering one question.





	two in the folk that keep the Dead down

**Author's Note:**

> The last planned instalment in my Abhorsen/Star Wars crossovers - everything else I could think of would be yet another epic!

The message hawk comes a day after the Midwinter Festival, when all the hangovers have worn off but Luke is still limping because he twisted an ankle dancing the Bird of Dawning. Jyn is called out of the Midwinter’s End banquet to hear the hawk speak, which (given the company she’s in) is more of a relief than an annoyance. Cassian is at a slightly lower table talking easily with Bodhi, but Jyn has been jammed onto the high table with Lord Vaspar, the dried-up old bastard, and he’s spent the entire banquet hinting after an Abhorsen-in-Waiting. Jyn was eighteen when she became Abhorsen; she's now in her late thirties, and people are watching ever more anxiously for signs of an heir to her duties. She's beginning to think that Leia had the right idea when she bore Ben so young. She’s also fantasising about slamming Lord Vaspar’s head repeatedly into the marble table.

She’s grateful when Shara Bey’s boy - acting as a page and too sweet for his reckless charm to grate – hurries up and confidentially tells her about the hawk. It means she can use the urgency of her duties to rise and leave without so much as a word for his incredibly nosy lordship.

It's not good news, of course - she hadn't held out much hope that it would be. A Mordicant plus necromancer, freshly risen in the lawless south-west and preying on the villages there, hoping perhaps that the Abhorsen will find it difficult to reach them. It _will_ be difficult; she can only hope she isn't too late.

She sends Poe to fetch Cassian and starts to pack. Poe returns with both Cassian and Leia, for all it's not the end of the banquet, and the two of them exchange quiet words before Cassian goes to have the Paperwings prepared for a dawn take-off. Leia, however, sits down on Jyn and Cassian's bed and watches Jyn check her bells and sword. Wearing rich red and gold brocade with pearls studding the coils of her dark hair, she looks like an echo and rhyme of lost Queen Padmé, as Jyn herself echoes and rhymes with valiant Lyra.

What they have of their fathers is more of a question. Jyn unpins a net of opals from her hair and drops it into a coffer, and doesn't try to answer. 

"I overheard Lord Vaspar," Leia says, at last. 

Jyn collapses into an overstuffed chair with an ungainly huff. "I should think everyone did."

"He doesn't know."

"No. No-one does."

That's an exaggeration. Some people know about the few occasions when there might have been a child, when they slipped up or they thought it might be safe to try. Three times in twenty years, and the first time Jyn and Cassian weren't ready, and the second time she didn't even know until it was too late, and the third she got far enough to choose Samuel for a boy or Breha for a girl, and an unlucky battle took the chance to give the name away from her.

Fortunate that she wasn't really showing; fortunate that only really a few people knew. Neither she nor Cassian have ever liked to talk about it, and neither has really wanted to try for a baby since; it's a separate impulse to wanting children, it seems. But Leia has always had the trick of just enough kindness and not too much. 

Every now and then she thinks about Samuel; Baze told her, because she made him, that the baby would have been Samuel. She tries not to think about him too often.

"There's still time," Jyn says finally. "And if there isn't… I have cousins."

This is true. Mogget helped her look into it, five years ago when she miscarried for the last time. None of them seem to really want the life, or to be particularly interested, but who knows what that means?

Leia folds brocade between her fingers. There's still time for her and Han too, when he comes home. But it hasn't happened yet.

"Nobody ever bothers Luke about this - this _shit_," she bursts out viciously, apparently quite without meaning to.

Jyn laughs. "I've been a bad influence on you," she says. "Your majesty."

The Mordicant has done a lot of damage by the time they reach Edge, the message hawk’s source. The weather was so poor over the plateau they were forced to land at Abhorsen's House and wait out the storm, and Jyn castigates herself for not being able to fly through the clouds when she sees the state of Edge from the air. Its walls are breached in two places, and a thick pall of smoke smells like bodies burning. An attack in the night, then, and likely only dawn has saved them. If that worked the necromancer must be inexperienced, the Mordicant young and gathering strength: the sky is clear but the sunlight is not strong.

They have been very lucky and she is late. Jyn's heart hurts even as they welcome her, and none of them blame her for not being here last night. It seems none of them expected her to come in the first place.

The mayor is criminal, possibly a little corrupt; Jyn can't be sure, though she is confident Cassian will find out. She hangs onto her patience with her teeth until she can reasonably excuse herself to patrol the town, searching for any lurking spirits that may have taken advantage of the hole ripped in Life, and leaves the mayor to Cassian's not-particularly-tender mercies.

Three and a half hours later the town has been cleared and Jyn never wants to see another cellar again. Her shoulders hurt from hauling herself into and out of endless dark and nasty corners and she had to dispatch a nest of Fourth Gate Resters. Their high-pitched squeals are still ringing in her ears when Cassian finds her and lays a hand on her shoulder, and warmth slides into her veins; whether from his presence or the Charter she doesn't immediately know.

"I took lodgings for us," he says. "And ordered a meal."

She turns her head to the side, and her cheek presses against his wrist, against the place where a crisp little tattoo rests across the veins; the letter J, entwined with a key. "Thanks," she says, and leans into him just a little.

The biggest tavern in the town has survived, since it was at the opposite end of Edge from the breaches in the walls. Its thick stone foundations and heavy shutters promise security. Jyn is currently more interested in the hostess's cooking, which smells excellent; they eat a belated lunch in a private room, roast fowl with dried fruit and spices and potatoes on the side, and talk over what Cassian's found out. With the take cleared and a map laid over it, he talks her through the damage to nearby villages as locals know of it (extensive), broken Charter stones (two), and the next target as Cassian sees it (not a village at all).

"I sent to Luke to have the Charter stones mended," Cassian says, "and to the Guard garrison at Qyrre for clean-up. But from what the mayor says, Plutt's convoy will have landed today and be moving inshore."

"Smugglers?" Jyn demands.

"Scavengers, rather," Cassian says. "I've heard Han speak of Plutt; he doesn't have a lot of kind words for him. He'll steal anything he can get. Bad debt and worse business practices - but there's little trade around here, and what there is is expensive. Plutt is one of the few brave enough or stupid enough to cross the southwest from sea to Ratterlin on the cheap."

"Hmm," Jyn says, and stretches out her back with a sigh. She props her chin on her hand and stares at the map; Cassian has marked out, very lightly, the likely route of the convoy. 

“They’ll be poorly defended,” Cassian says. “I’m expecting them to be hit here.” He taps the map with a finger, identifying a pinch point. Jyn squints at it, compares it to the likely time for a trade caravan, moving slow, across bleak ground, and the time when the necromancer and Mordicant will feel able to come out of hiding and attack. 

“We’ll catch them before they get hit,” she says. “We have time to sleep an hour or two, I think.”

They’ve grown accustomed to sleeping in broad daylight: it’s often the only time they’re not needed. Cassian could keep normal hours, but he doesn’t, he follows her, and Jyn will never stop being shocked by that.

They almost catch the caravan before it gets hit, but it’s moving more slowly than expected, and the necromancer is bolder than Jyn realised. Plutt may pride himself on having the know-how to lead a caravan across dangerous territory, but he’s very clearly been taken by surprise. The tattered wagons and beasts of burden are all awry, screaming and lowing and gouts of flame starting here and there, and (Jyn can see from the air) a portly, greasy man and a couple of enforcers are escaping on carthorses. The Mordicant isn’t troubling to follow them, gorging itself instead on the blood to be had among Plutt’s poor benighted hangers-on. It’s trying to climb a bluff after a little dark-haired girl screaming defiance and throwing stones at it - Jyn hurls a spell overarm, and Charter fire splashes over its hide, causing it to slip on the gravel and slide down to the base of the bluff. It seizes a ragged guardsman by the neck and shakes him like a rag doll, and the harsh cry of necromancer’s bells rings through the air. 

Cassian almost lands the Paperwing on top of the necromancer, which causes the bells to jangle in a way that makes Jyn's teeth ache. Jyn gathers herself and leaps out, sword already drawn, Saraneth quick to her hand, and then there's nothing but blood and battle and the echo of the bells, and the phantom pull of the River at her calves. The necromancer is young and untried, but not afraid to face Abhorsen, and her raucous cries, boiling with Free Magic, draw the Mordicant away from easier prey. It's no easy win. None of them ever are. 

Jyn grits her teeth and fights.

By the time the Mordicant has crumbled into dust and the necromancer is lying on the ground, transfixed by Jyn's sword and bubbling her last painful breaths, Jyn is scorched and staggering. She delivers a mercy blow to the necromancer and sets the body alight, then turns to look for Cassian.

He's reorganised the people, as she expected. The wagons are set up in a defensive formation, the remaining beasts at the centre, and the wounded are being tended, the dead burned. But Cassian himself seems to be devoting most of his attention to the girl from earlier, who is now wrapped in a threadbare blanket and sitting on the ground beside the Paperwing, nibbling on snacks from their stores. Her boots are too big for her and they have holes in, and as Jyn gets closer she realises the girl is not just underdressed for the weather but underfed and undersized. But her eyes are bright and her hair neatly pulled back in three buns, and when Jyn sits heavily down next to Cassian she is almost as surprised to see that the girl doesn't have a Charter mark as she is to see that the child doesn't flinch.

No Charter mark and she threw stones at a Mordicant, instead of running away. Who is this girl?

"Jyn, this is Rey," Cassian says, answering one question. It's not a name typical of the Old Kingdom, but that means nothing.

The girl bobs cheerfully. "Abhorsen!"

"Please. My name is Jyn." Jyn tears into a bread and cheese sandwich; the first mouthful tastes like ash, and the second sweet relief.

Cassian goes on catechising the girl, gently and casually, about her background. It seems they've covered the most obvious points, mother, father, siblings: but whatever the answers to those questions were, the replies to Cassian's next questions make Jun want to hit things. No, Rey has never been to school, though she can read a little and write her name. Yes, she works, she's very clever with numbers and cleans up a lot of their salvaged goods. Not for pay, no, for food and board. Yes, for about four years, since her father died, but she's not sure exactly how old she was then.

It makes little difference. Under the laws of the Kingdom no child can be indentured, and may not sign for an apprenticeship before the age of thirteen. Rey isn't thirteen now, and she certainly wasn't four years ago. It's also illegal not to pay an apprentice, or to fail to educate them, or to fail to outfit them appropriately. Rey is so cold in her rags and boots that Cassian has lit her a fire. 

Jyn gets up and stalks around the defensive encampment, asking her own questions. No, says a squinting guardsman, Plutt doesn't stop in walled towns or kindle watchfires: he'd have to pay too much in fuel or tolls. He pays a wage, but only at the final destination. The food aboard ship is always slightly rotten unless he's eating it and nobody stays if they can help it, which makes it hard to find anyone who knows anything about Rey's past. There is, however, a cook and quartermaster, who enjoys a privileged position and is consequently reluctant to give Plutt up. Jyn sits by him and cleans her sword in silence until he cracks.

Rey was born with the caravan. She's between seven and nine. Her parents were both Old Kingdom; a pair of travellers, come down in the world, feckless, both used to better, her mother rather naive and claiming to have the Sight. They'd only been with the caravan a single season, traveling between the Kingdom and Nematosa in the West, working their passage - and then Rey was born without a healer and the mother was much weakened and couldn't be moved and, eventually, died. The father was lost overboard in a storm a few years later. Plutt keeps the child on out of the goodness of his heart, supposing he has such an organ. 

The quartermaster doesn't remember the names. The father drowned shortly after he joined the caravan himself. He can't be expected to remember everything. And look, the Mordicant has set most of the records on fire. 

Jyn eyes the scorched strongbox and burned paper. No Mordicant did that, but a corrupt quartermaster with authority approaching might have done. 

She can hear hoofbeats nearby. She stands and steps out of the shadow of the wagons to see a squadron of the Royal Guard closing in at a canter.

"Well, you can tell it to Captain Vaishali," she says, "and hope Unkar Plutt told a story more or less the same."

She leaves him to choke on that.

Rey doesn't have many possessions, and doesn't seem sorry to leave the caravan. She is perplexed that they want to protect her, baffled by the idea of legal rights, delighted by the Paperwing, confused by a hot bath and clean clothes, and then she's asleep.

There are good orphanages in Belisaere that will take her, Jyn thinks, tucking a fold of blanket more securely over Rey's shoulder. Good foster-homes, if the girl has no relatives. She must have relatives.

Cassian is looking at the girl very strangely, and all of a sudden Jyn feels a fool. Of course.

"She's the same age you were," she says, "when you -"

"Shush," Cassian says, drawing her out of the little inn room where the head maid set up a cot for Rey, clucking over the sweet little motherless thing. "Yes."

He tangles his hand with Jyn's, and sweeps a thumb over the tattoo on her right wrist. When Leia ascended to the throne she called Cassian her foster-brother, for the time they had been raised in the same household, and awarded him a small parcel of Organa lands and ordered the heralds to attend on him so Cassian could choose his own sigil, start a line of his own.

Cassian immediately revolted against the idea of any major changes and would not be moved. The Organa owl at rest became an owl in flight, and even then, Cassian hasn't troubled to change any of the old crests or decorations except as they need to be replaced. But on Jyn's wrist is a bird of prey, its wings spread wide.

Sometimes Jyn thinks no-one at court troubles to remember the Organas save Leia and Cassian - they died so long ago, and now there is a queen restored, as if the Interregnum never happened. But Leia and Cassian have tenacious memories, and Cassian in particular has not forgotten what it was to be an orphan of no family, and suddenly a protected and valued ward.

Cassian wants to protect this little girl; Jyn does, too. And there's something prickling at the back of her mind, something to do with Rey, which she doesn't understand. 

"Come on," Jyn says. "Let's get some sleep."

Luke arrives at noon the next day, all golden hair, cornflower eyes, broad smile and sunshine charm, none of which is diminished by Jyn and Cassian's poor mood or the slight hitch in his gait from the dancing accident. He brightens the eyes of Edge's townsfolk, brings news of a further relief column riding over from Qyrre to support the rebuilding and reassure the scarred countryside, and charms everyone, which allows Jyn to grip her temper a little less tightly.

Plutt has spent the morning up before the magistrate, in Jyn and Cassian's presence. Quite apart from the wrangling over his crimes of negligence, he seemed to believe he could sell them Rey and make a profit, and when it was made clear to him that Rey would no longer feature in his caravan he tried to sell whatever information he had about Rey's parents, whether it were true or not. Cassian had already been through his papers and discovered nothing unburned that related to her, save for a reference or two to Rey, cabin girl, fraudulently listed as a twelve-year-old.

In the end all Plutt's testimony does is confirm that Rey is about eight years old, and the story the quartermaster gave Jyn: a fair-haired woman who claimed to have the Sight, and called herself Ell, and died in childbirth, traveling with a pale, dark-haired man called Ira who was lost overboard. There are no clues to be had in that: either of them could have been anyone at all. Names including those elements are as common as muck. The Sight is uncommon outside the Clayr's Glacier, but it's far from unknown, and Ell may not have told the whole truth. Rey herself can't add to it, except to say that her father wanted her to be Charter-baptised, but couldn't do it himself, or pay for someone else to. The court proceedings seem to confuse and intimidate her, so Jyn takes her out, not just for her temper’s sake but for Rey’s peace of mind.

Cassian stays to spend the rest of the morning shredding Plutt; Jyn takes Rey to the Charter stone and watches her play in the fruit trees around it. She's a quick little monkey, sharp and too clever for her years, and now that she's well-fed and wide awake Jyn keeps having to explain that she doesn't owe them anything.

Luke's offensively yellow Wallmaker Paperwing whistling overhead causes Rey to fall off the Charter stone, and Jyn's heart leaps into her mouth, but Rey is on her feet and staring up into the sky before Jyn can cry out.

"Who's that? They fly like you and Cassian did!"

"Prince Luke," Jyn says, taking Rey by the hand. "Queen Leia's twin brother. Come and meet him, and have something to eat."

"I had something to eat before. I don't need -"

"You had breakfast," Jyn says, cursing Unkar Plutt. "Now you need lunch. So you can grow up tall and strong."

Luke's already working his less tangible magic when Jyn reaches him; she can feel how much calmer and more relaxed everyone is. She and Cassian are not reassuring, after all. They’re what everyone wants to see when the crisis is unfolding; later, they are too slow to smile, too grim-faced. Cassian can turn on charm and draw ease and comfort from strangers, but this business with Rey has upset him, and he either can’t or won’t lie. And Jyn is just as hatchet-faced as usual. 

The crowd around Luke is sizeable. Jyn pulls Rey before her and shepherds the child through the press of bodies, which parts before her in instinctive response to her keys and bells. 

“Who’s this, then?” Luke asks, immediately going to one knee and smiling at Rey, and Rey draws back a little but still returns the smile. Luke has that effect on people, the same way Leia tends to scoop them up and carry them forward to action. He’s far from universally sunny - after hiking across half of the Kingdom and defeating the Blackcloak with him, to say nothing of the excitements of the last twenty years, Jyn knows that for certain - but he’s good at broadcasting confidence and warmth.

“This is Rey,” Jyn says, when Rey doesn’t immediately answer: Jyn has noticed that she is less willing to speak to strangers, and less willing still to deal with large groups of people. “She was with Unkar Plutt’s caravan, and she seems to have lost her parents. Cassian and I will find her family.” She glances down at Rey, who is now noticeably tensing her shoulders and drawing her head back against scrutiny. Jyn grips a little tighter. “She threw stones at a Mordicant.”

Luke’s eyebrows fly up. “That was extremely brave,” he says, and ruffles Rey’s hair lightly, which she obviously does not like. Luke, Jyn has noticed, is not very good with children (although you would need to be fairly superhuman to be good with Prince Ben). “We should talk more, Jyn, I want to get to at least one of those Charter stones today.”

Jyn nods. “I’ll be back at the inn. Come and have lunch with us.”

Luke is there for lunch. Rey talks to him a little, this time. Luke is clearly intrigued by her, but can’t explain why; what little he can describe sounds like the strange feeling Jyn gets about Rey, the idea that she’s somehow specifically important, that she needs to be kept safe, that she has some particular affinity with something Jyn doesn’t quite recognise. Jyn finds herself fidgeting with her mother’s Charter medallion, and drops it down inside her shirt, puzzled. 

They ride to the nearest village with a broken Charter stone. It’s only an hour away, and at the moment it’s largely abandoned, the people fled to escape the sickness of the broken stone. Jyn and Cassian cannot leave Rey at the inn - at least, the innkeeper and her husband have taken a fancy to the child and offer to watch her, but Rey’s comfort with them is not matched by her comfort with others, and Cassian is confident some of the townsfolk are in Plutt’s pay. Still, the sickness is foul for even a child with no Charter mark, so Rey rides with Cassian and stays at a decent distance while Jyn and Luke dismount and walk the last hundred metres to the broken stone, three or four of the most experienced guardsmen accompanying them. Jyn senses no Dead in the immediate surroundings, only the usual sinkhole-crossroads feeling of a broken stone; she pulls the body of the Charter mage killed to break the stone off the platform and burns it, and then draws her sword and stands ready while Luke takes out the silver knife, the salt, the earth, and begins his spells.

Jyn has seen this done a thousand times, both by Luke and (less often) by Leia. She will never get used to the sideways shift of reality, the way the stone glows and shifts and heats and _changes_, the moment when it seems like the whole world has shifted a quarter-turn and left your head behind, and then suddenly where there was terror and pain there is nothing, and then the familiar, encompassing warmth of the Charter. 

It’s very beautiful and it invariably makes her feel like she’s going to throw up. Maybe it wasn’t appropriate to bring Rey here, but when Jyn looks around Rey is watching with wide eyes, not looking the slightest bit upset or frightened. She looks very comfortable with Cassian, too, sitting before him in the saddle, and Jyn can’t help but smile at that.

Luke sits down very definitely on the ground, face running with sweat despite the chill. Jyn kneels hastily and heals the deep cut on his palm, while Captain Vaishali takes out a water bottle and sluices the blood from the reformed stone. It comes away easily - almost too easily, as if the stone itself wants to shed it.

Cassian rides closer and dismounts, lifting Rey down with him and setting her on the ground. He arches an eyebrow at Luke, who grins and salutes with his own water bottle.

“No different to usual,” Luke says. “It doesn’t get easier; it doesn’t get harder.” He straightens a little and crosses his legs. “Ben has taken over some of the maintenance for me now, so I have fewer new scars.”

Luke has only one remaining flesh hand, and it’s patterned with pink-silvery scars. It looks steadier now that Luke has had some water, and steadier still as he absent-mindedly eats a snack, and when Luke looks at Rey - now on a level with him, if still holding on to Cassian’s hand - he is obviously trying to inspire confidence. “If you want a Charter mark, Rey, now is a good time.”

Rey hesitates, looking up at Cassian and Jyn in a way that makes Jyn’s heart twist.

“A blessing for the stone,” Luke adds, because he knows a thing or two about children too used to paying a price for kindness. The creases around his eyes are deep; friendly smiling or shrewd squinting, most can’t tell them apart on an initial glance. “You’d be doing me a favour.”

Rey still hesitates, and Jyn holds her breath; it’s so clear that Rey is afraid of incurring debts, but it’s also clear that this is something she wants, too. In the morning Cassian found her already awake, reaching for the night-light they had left her with careful fingers, and she was fascinated by the Charter stone at Edge. Her father may not have been able to baptise her himself, but he left her with the clear impression that the Charter was a thing of beauty and importance, something to be loved and respected. It must have been heavily emphasised, or Rey - so young now, such a little girl when her father died - would have forgotten.

Rey edges forward tentatively, without letting go of Cassian’s hand. Luke doesn’t move.

“Yes please,” Rey whispers. 

Luke nods solemnly, and reaches for the wood-ash, for the little gleaming bottle; he marks the sign on his forehead with a quick, careless smudge, tracing the outlines of his own Charter mark perfectly. Rey looks very solemn and pale in the child’s leggings and tunic and navy-blue cape that were found for her, the pair of boots which are still too big but which don’t have holes in, and in the strange afternoon light her hair and eyes look very dark. And there’s that strange, inexplicable feeling of recognition again. Jyn looks up at Cassian, and sees his eyes focussed on Rey’s hooded head. 

Luke begins the chant. It’s familiar to Jyn, who knows little of the deeper mysteries of the Charter that don’t involve dead things, but who has been to a surprising number of baptisms - not _all _of the Kingdom views her as an ill omen. It’s not familiar to Rey, whose hazel eyes have gone very round and fixed on the bottle pulsing with pearlescent light, and who is standing extremely still as if she’s thinking about whether to run. 

Jyn reaches forward, and takes Rey’s free hand. The girl grips tightly; there’s more strength in those small hands than Jyn realised. And she doesn’t close her eyes, not even when the bottle flashes bright, or when Luke touches the bottle to the stone and to the ash on his forehead, unstoppers it, and flings half of its contents onto Rey’s forehead, saying: “By the Charter that binds all things, we name thee -”

There’s an extremely awkward pause: Rey has no parents to speak for her, and if ‘Rey’ is as much a nickname as ‘Ell’ or ‘Ira’ she may not even know her own real name. She looks tongue-tied, too, and panicked, but Jyn’s tongue is stilled as much as Cassian’s, because she is not this child’s mother, and -

“Rey,” Rey croaks, nervous but clear, and slowly, as Jyn and Cassian watch, the ash reforms on Rey’s forehead. 

In the soft silence that follows, Jyn leans forward, and wipes the ash from Rey’s face, leaving a small, perfectly formed Charter mark in the centre of the girl’s forehead. “Look at this,” she says softly, and touches two fingers to Rey’s brand-new Charter mark. “Copy me.”

She only has time to feel Rey’s unsteady fingers touch her own forehead before she’s falling directly into the Charter, almost drowning in it, surrounded and borne up by it. It’s all the more overwhelming for being unexpected: the ease of the connection and the depth of it is disconcertingly like she’s run into Chirrut, or the first time she touched Luke’s mark. It’s like laying her hand against the Wall itself.

Rey’s not just any child with a new mark. Somehow, from somewhere, she has Charter blood, and that makes her -

“Cousin,” Jyn says, drawing back her fingers and opening her eyes. She can hear the disbelief in her own voice.

“_What_?” say Cassian and Luke, in almost perfect synchronicity. Rey’s jaw is hanging open.

“Cousin,” Jyn repeats. “Whoever your parents were, Rey, one of them at least bore Charter blood. And that means we’re related.”

Unsurprisingly, Rey bursts into tears.  
  
“_Shit_,” Jyn says.

Cassian puts Rey to bed with a snack supper of bread and cheese and a stuffed bear toy donated by the soft-hearted head maid, and Jyn stops cursing herself and her absolute lack of tact long enough to eat dinner. There’s no question that what Jyn said is correct; both Cassian and Luke have tested her mark, and she is very clearly running with Charter blood. But where the hell did it come from?

She and Cassian and Luke talk this over, and the only conclusion that they can come to is that Rey’s mysterious mother Ell was a Daughter of the Clayr. A fair-haired seer seems like the most likely candidate to have borne a child with Charter blood, and if Ira knew of his partner’s heritage then of course he’d be insistent that their daughter be baptised. It makes perfect sense, too, that he would not have directly spoken of it. You can do a lot with the blood of the Charter, whether it comes in a baptised vessel or not. It _is _strange that Ell didn’t return to the Glacier to bear her daughter, but maybe she didn’t have time, or lacked funds, or didn’t want to. Or perhaps she preferred to stay with her partner.

This revelation at least solves one problem; the Daughters of the Clayr are a clannish lot and it is far more likely than not that they have a record of all their travelling Daughters, and there can’t be unlimited numbers of Daughters with names that match Ell’s who are the right age to be Rey’s mother. Rey will have cousins and aunts and grandmothers, and even if she has no close kin, the Clayr raise their children communally. She will even see Jyn and Cassian often, if that’s what she wants. They are frequently there, after all. And Baze and Chirrut will take an interest in her, so she will never be without support. It’s promising. 

Rey doesn’t seem altogether enthusiastic when Jyn and Cassian explain it to her the next morning, but Jyn wasn’t expecting her to. Jyn doesn’t remember being enthusiastic about a single thing at Rey’s age, when she lost her father the first time.

She _is _surprised when Rey wants to fly with her, and when Rey sits so close to Cassian she’s practically under his elbow, and it makes her think.

“You won’t lose us,” Jyn says, up in the air, when she’s reached a conclusion. “This isn’t leaving you behind.”

There’s no reply. When she glances back, Rey has fallen asleep in the bucket seat, with a blanket wrapped around her and the stuffed bear clutched tightly in her arms.

Maybe it’s for the best. She doesn’t remember her father sounding exactly convincing, either.

They break the journey at High Bridge. Rey is too tired to walk straight, so Cassian carries her. They stay with Lady Mavis Mothma, niece of the unforgettable Regent Mon, and Mavis refers to Rey - any doubt in her voice carefully hidden - as their daughter.

“Our ward,” Cassian corrects. “We think it likely she’s a lost Daughter of the Clayr; we’re taking her home.”

“Oh, I see,” Lady Mavis says. Her eyes linger on Rey’s dark hair, her fair skin: not unknown among the Clayr, but untypical. She doesn’t say anything else.

Neither does Rey. She does not want to be parted from Jyn and Cassian, so they eat dinner with her, in a room with green and white hangings softening the orange-yellow sandstone and a window onto the rushing Ratterlin below. (The window does not open more than an inch or two. Jyn saw Cassian check.) They don’t even try to go anywhere until Rey has fallen asleep, and even then it takes two false starts, Rey jerking awake at the slightest sound.

She wasn’t this jumpy before, Jyn thinks, and wonders what is truly the mistake: identifying her family, or giving her up to them.

Fuck it, she thinks, I don’t _want _to. 

But a childhood at the Clayr’s Glacier will be safer and friendlier than any upbringing Jyn and Cassian could offer Rey.

Except it turns out - after a week staying at the Clayr’s Glacier, a week in which Rey flatly refuses to wear a Daughter of the Clayr’s juvenile blue tunic, excels in private magical tuition with an enchanted Baze, and clings to Jyn and Cassian every opportunity she gets - that they absolutely cannot prove whether or not Rey is a Daughter of the Clayr. There are not one, not two, but _thirteen _women between thirty and fifty who might have borne Rey ten years ago, whose whereabouts are not currently known, and whose names contain the syllable Ell: all of which disregards the possibility that Ell lied about her name, or that she wasn’t a Clayr at all. Rey is certainly liked here - sulky as she currently is, her peers are willing to welcome her - but she doesn’t resemble anyone, and there will be no way to narrow down which of the thirteen women might be her mother until the Daughters of the Clayr have managed to contact twelve of them and identify the one who is dead. 

Unless of course _several _of them are dead, which means they will possibly never, ever know who Rey’s mother is. 

Charter damn it all.

“She could be a cousin of yours instead,” Chirrut suggests to Jyn. “Directly, I mean.”

“It’s possible,” Jyn admits, watching Rey swim in the pools. She is an extremely confident swimmer, possibly because this is the easiest and cleanest water she’s ever swum in, with no currents. In fact, she’s helping the younger children float, and looks almost carefree. “But I’m damned if I know which one might have been her father. I assume her father. Maybe Ell dyed her hair.”

Chirrut humours her. “Ask the Mogget. If anyone will know, he will.”

“Ugh,” Jyn sighs. It’s not that she doesn’t appreciate Mogget, although she can see she will need to sit Rey down and explain about the cat that’s not a cat. But she’s not looking forward to the commentary on her accidental acquisition of a child. “He probably knows too much.”

“Which room will you put her in?”

“The one across the hall from mine,” Jyn says automatically. “It’s sunniest. She likes bright colours. And it’s not too far away. She gets nervous that Cassian and I have run off.”

Chirrut preserves an entertained silence.

Jyn swears. “She’s not my daughter, all right? She’s not my daughter, and I don’t have the right to treat her like she is. She has a family.” 

“She has you and Cassian,” Chirrut says. 

“She probably has uncles and aunts and - and cousins who actually knew her parents, know -”

“But they don’t know her,” Chirrut says. “They don’t even know she exists, or they would have claimed her by now. Or perhaps they have not been able to, which would indeed be terrible, or they have chosen not to, which would be… worse.”

  
“I would kill them,” Jyn says, with instant conviction. 

Chirrut hums. He sounds amused. 

“Saw Gerrera was as much your father as Galen Erso,” he says, eventually, just when Jyn thinks he’s let the topic go. “As much your parent as Lyra Erso. It is possible that Rey has found a home with you, whoever her birth parents were. And neither you nor Cassian wants to send her away.”

Horror swamps Jyn at the thought. “No. _Never_.”

“Well,” Chirrut says, with a small gesture, as if to say _there you are_.

“What if we do find her family, though,” Jyn says, “and we have to...”

Chirrut’s hand clasps hers, solid and grounding. “No-one can answer that,” he says. “Trust the Charter. It sent you to her, and her to you.”

Jyn thinks of a little girl, throwing stones at a Mordicant, and then thinks: _yes_.

And then she thinks of something else. “Have you Seen her? I mean, in the ice?”  


For the first time since Jyn and Cassian explained Rey’s background, Chirrut frowns. 

“Strangely enough,” he says, “no.”

They have fine weather for the trip to Abhorsen’s House. Jyn and Cassian wrap Rey up in tiny Clayr furs and mittens and fly fast - just fast enough to make it to the House before sunset. Rey is extremely fidgety - though she has been uncommonly well-behaved for a small child stuck in a small space, there are limits, and any child gets tired of focusing on lessons or the scenery or sleeping - and Jyn is keen to speak to Mogget, to learn whatever the hell she can about this child who’s rolled into her life, who she never wants to let go. She will be sorry, if it turns out she has to pack Rey off to a bunch of cousins in Navis, or in Belisaere, or wherever. She’s not sure she will be willing to do it. She doesn’t like her cousins much, and none of them have met Rey even once.

Cassian is ambivalent: at the same age he had only recently lost all hope of finding his birth family. If he could give Rey back the family she was born to, he would do it in a heartbeat, Jyn knows; but she knows, too, and so does he, that everyone and everything has a time to die, and Ira and Ell met theirs some years ago now.

In the meantime, Cassian is getting very used to reminding Rey to eat her vegetables. Jyn always forgets. 

The whole question is rendered completely moot when Cassian helps Rey climb down from the landing pad, and they walk through the gardens to the front door, which is - 

Is wide open, and Mogget is sitting on the front step, and there are absolute phalanxes of ghostly sendings lined up in the hall behind him, from the newest and strongest to older, faded makings that Jyn hardly ever sees.

“Welcome home,” Mogget says, grinning like this is the funniest thing he’s ever seen. “Abhorsen-in-Waiting.”

Cassian and Rey both stare at Jyn, with identical dropped-jaw expressions that seem to demand an explanation.

Jyn has not got an explanation. She gives into her most immediate impulse instead.

“What the _fuck_,” says Jyn.


End file.
